Have you ever noticed the way birds circle in giant swarms around seemingly random areas, for example? When the swarms begin circling in the sky, do you only see the birds, or do you see the pockets of hot air that they tend to migrate around and the subtle way the space between each bird is maintained?

In nearly everything around us there’s a negative space. There’s the hidden elements that don’t require our immediate attention and therefore go unnoticed. The space around your computer monitor, or the space between each key on the keyboard. Rather than focusing all of our attention on the main subjects around us, what if we instead started focusing on the negative space? The spaces and gaps, the surrounding environments, everything we tend to block out naturally.

Nobody can see everything at once, of course. Our brains work by primarily focusing on specific tidbits of incoming information. Though that doesn’t mean our attention has to constantly be on the one or two things we think it has to be, right?

Knowing what surrounds you and the ideas and products you work with is important in developing your creativity.

Today, look in the spaces between spaces, the negative space, the pieces and parts of every-day life that you usually ignore. What’s there that could inspire you or improve your ideas or thinking?